business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething
political-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get
tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the
bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a
fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he
was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, "Yes,
yes--go on--what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, in
particular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me.
I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses
all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear
(to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an
offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight
lightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringly
at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any
mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would
rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," and
started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me
back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I
wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality
of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to the
exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he
probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight
"points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod.
He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot;
"coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would
stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and
"render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said
apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did,
but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.
Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do